PRIZE-WINNING
NOVELIST AND BARNARD PROFESSOR OF MIGRATION AND
SOCIAL ORDER CARYL PHILLIPS LEADS AN INTERNATIONAL
LIFE OF WRITING, ACADEMICS AND SCREENWRITING
New
York, N.Y.-- Caryl Phillips, prize-winning novelist,
Henry Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order
at Barnard College and a successful screenwriter,
divides his time between New York, London and the
Caribbean. In short, everything has fallen into
place for Phillips. His path to success, however,
was not easy, but his journeys across many oceans
have given him a deep well of material for a growing
body of work exploring migration.
Phillips was born in St. Kitts, West Indies on March
13, 1958 in an impoverished village with only 300
inhabitants, in a room above the village rum shop.
His parents of modest means decided that as soon
as he was born they would leave the island in search
of better opportunities. When Phillips was four
months old, his family embarked on a trip aboard
a banana boat with a destination of England. The
family settled in Leeds, where Phillips's aunt had
already moved. Phillips's father managed to find
work as a laborer for the railways and his mother
secured a clerk's position in an office.
Phillips' parents and their four sons lived in the
rented accommodations until the mid-1960s when his
parents had saved enough money to buy a house. Soon
after, however, they divorced and Phillips moved
with his mother to a predominantly white working-class
neighborhood. Growing up as a teenager, Phillips
experienced many racial confrontations. He learned
to run fast and fight back; having three brothers
looking after him and each other also helped.
Phillips was one of the few minority children in
school, but he never felt anxiety about the group's
solidarity. He was forbidden to go out on the town
by his strict father, so he did not get into trouble
like other boys of his age. Rather, he concentrated
on his academic work and took a particular liking
to history and English, becoming the best in his
class between ages 11 and 13. His hardworking parents
set a good example for Phillips: despite the divorce,
each parent earned a college degree. In 1972, when
Phillips was 14, he moved back with his father who
now was a trained social worker, and took his parents'
example to heart.
While
attending King's Norton Boys School, Phillips decided
that he was going to go to college and not just
any college - he set his sights on Oxford. His headmaster
was not as hopeful of his prospects and said that
if Phillips worked hard he might be able to go to
college, but he was better off getting a job. Phillips
responded, "I am going to Oxford." The headmaster's
reply was that nobody in the school's 85-year history
had ever been accepted to Oxford.
But
Phillips was determined. He told his English teacher,
with whom he had grown close, about the headmaster's
comments. His teacher offered to work with him to
achieve his goal. And achieve he did, becoming the
first student from his high school to ever be accepted
to Oxford. "My English teacher had a huge influence
on my life and I credit him for my passion to work
with students. I still keep in touch with him; in
fact, I just received an e-mail from him the other
day."
Phillips who is fit and lanky, also credits sports
for giving him self-confidence as a youngster. He
was the captain of the soccer and rugby teams, and
he ran track and field in high school. He considered
going into professional sports but his parents would
not allow him. "They said they didn't bring me to
England to be a typical black boy who would find
only career opportunities in sports or as an entertainer.
I am happy now that they wouldn't let me, I have
gotten more out of life by pursuing my education
and a career in teaching and writing."
Educated
at Oxford - At Oxford, Phillips first studied to
be a theatre director. He directed many plays and
acknowledges his theatre teacher as a great personal
tutor who gave him the "just do it" attitude. However,
he later discovered that he did not want to direct
others, or deal with actors' fickle personalities
and he found a new love. "When I am writing, I can
only disappoint myself," says Phillips. After only
three years, he graduated with honors in 1979, with
a degree in English literature and language.
Upon leaving Oxford, Phillips did not want to enter
the "normal" working world, so he took a chance
and gave himself a year to write. He wrote a play,
which was bought by the BBC and was also later turned
into a theater play that became a big success. With
his first paycheck, Phillips bought two tickets
to his birthplace for his mother and himself.
About Writing and Academics - Phillips writes about
migration, belonging, discovery and hope. "It is
the same story rewritten in many ways. I feel it
is my duty to tell the story and I can't stop telling
it. As long as I feel I have something to say I
have the obligation of saying it and I will keep
on writing. When I have said it all, I hope I will
be the first to admit it and just quit."
He
eventually entered academia, teaching at the University
of Stockholm, the National Institute of Teaching
in Singapore, Amherst College and in 1998 joining
Barnard College as Professor of English and Henry
R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order.
He likes to work with students and feels that he
can make a difference in their lives, just as his
English teacher did for him. "I feel they need someone
to provide them with the artistic opposition to
parents who will push them toward the traditional
careers of a law or medicine. I can provide them
with an alternative to the orthodox campus, which
provides the path to law school or medical school.
When my writing students go on and publish for the
first time, it is the ultimate reward for me."
Phillips
has had a long working relationship with Merchant
& Ivory Productions. He is currently working on
two screenplays: Mystic Masseur, a film from a novel
by V.S. Naipaul, and Giovanni's Room, a film based
on the novel by James Baldwin that is being filmed
in Paris. He has divided his time between New York,
London and the Caribbean with constant travel to
locations throughout the Caribbean and Europe. "It's
a lifestyle that does not allow me to have a family,
" says Phillips, "but I never feel lonely, I am
with my books wherever I go and am in constant contact
with my assistants."
A
New Book - Phillips's latest project is The Atlantic
Sound, a book that explores the complex notion of
what constitutes "home", due to be published in
October by Knopf. Seen through the historical prism
of the Atlantic slave trade, Phillips undertakes
a personal quest to come to terms with the dislocation
and discontinuities that a diasporan history engenders
in the soul of an individual. He initially journeys
from the Caribbean to Britain by banana boat, repeating
a journey he made to England as a child in the late
1950s. He then visits three pivotal cities: Liverpool,
a city developed on the back of the slave trade,
which is now in denial about the true facts of its
own history; Elmina, on the west coast of Ghana,
site of the most important slave fort in Africa
and now a tourist destination for African-Americans;
and Charleston, South Carolina, celebrated as the
city where the Civil War began - not for being the
city where fully one-third of African-Americans
were landed and sold into bondage. Finally, he travels
to Israel where he encounters a community of 2,000
African-Americans, whose 30-year sojourn in the
Negev desert leaves him once again contemplating
the modern condition of diasporan displacement.
Of
his return to the birth village, Phillips admits
that he was appalled how far removed he was from
his roots: "Sophisticated me, I cannot come from
this place!" It helped him to understand that he
had a subject to write about. It also made him wonder
what would have happened to him if his parents never
left the "paradise" island.
Phillips has written numerous scripts for film,
theatre, radio, and television. He is the author
of six novels, The Final Passage, A State of Independence,
Higher Ground, Cambridge, Crossing the River, The
Nature of Blood, and one previous book of non-fiction,
The European Tribe. He has also edited Extravagant
Strangers: A Literature of Belonging, and The Right
Set: The Faber Book of Tennis. The New York Times
Book Review said that Phillips has taken "a firm
step toward joining the company of the literary
giants of our time." Phillips was short-listed for
the 1993 Booker Prize and his awards include the
Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim
Fellowship, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
among others.
Publications
Fiction
THE
NATURE OF BLOOD (1997), Faber and Faber, U.K.;
Knopf, U.S.A.
CROSSING
THE RIVER (1993), Bloomsbury, U.K.; Knopf,
U.S.A (1994)
CAMBRIDGE
(1991), Bloomsbury, U.K.; Knopf, U.S.A (1992)
HIGHER
GROUND (1989), Viking, U.K.; Viking, U.S.A
A
STATE OF INDEPENDENCE (1986) , Faber and Faber,
U.K; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, U.S.A
THE
FINAL PASSAGE (1985), Faber and Faber, U.K.;
Penguin, U.S.A
Non
Fiction
THE
ATLANTIC SOUND (2000), Faber and Faber, U.K.;
Knopf, U.S.A
EUROPEAN
TRIBE (1987), Faber and Faber, U.K.; Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, U.S.A
Anthologies
THE
RIGHT SET: A TENNIS ANTHOLOGY (1999) [Editor],
Faber and Faber, U.K.; Vintage, U.S.A
EXTRAVAGANT
STRANGERS: A LITERATURE OF BELONGING (1997) [Editor],
Faber and Faber, U.K.; Vintage, U.S.A
Plays
THE
SHELTER (1984), Amber Lane Press, U.K.
WHERE THERE IS DARKNESS, (1982), Amber Lane Press,
U.K
STRANGE FRUIT (1981), Amber Lane Press, U.K.
Radio
Plays
THE
WASTED YEARS (1985) [In BEST RADIO PLAYS OF 1984]
Film
PLAYING
AWAY (1987), Faber and Faber, U.K.; Faber
Inc., U.S.A
Translation
Fiction
and non-fiction translated into French, Swedish,
Dutch German, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, Greek,
Finnish, Japanese and Turkish.
Contact:
Petra Tuomi, Associate Director of Public Affairs,
212-854-7907
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